S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller (14 page)

His spell broken, Dean Apperson stared her down and seemed tempted to scold, but came up short. The Girl confounded even him. Instead, he resumed his rhythm and added a crescendo.

“To the newest ladies and gentlemen of the Domain, it is my proudest honor and greatest privilege to invite you now to add your name to the enduring history of S’wanee.” He nodded to the Phantom of the Opera, and everyone stood, as the first chord blasted.

Instantly, from the huge organ pipes, hundreds of Ping-Pong balls fired like bullets. They rained down across the audience and bounced off heads, chairs and walls, and bounced against the stained-glass windows and against one another, and kept bouncing in all directions. The audience erupted in laughter, and so did Cody, finally understanding a joke. Banjo shook his head in disapproval and whispered, “Tsk-tsk.” Elliott leaned out and beamed triumphantly at him, and Banjo kept shaking his head and said, “How
very
disrespectful.”

Dean Apperson smiled and nodded as a ball bounced off the altar and gave the freshmen a “Well played!” thumbs-up.

Now the Rebel’s Rest section step-slid, step-waited across the front, communion-style, where elite student Gownsmen manned the long table draped in purple satin. Spread open in the center was a large leather book with a paragraph of ornate calligraphy across the top and columns of empty lines below. Ross, very dapper today, watched proudly from the side as first-up Caleb and Skit and Paxton and Vail dipped the quill pen in the inkwell and signed their names and shook Dean Apperson’s hand.

The calligraphy paragraph, Cody knew, was the official S’wanee Honor Code, which they had sent him over the summer. It simply stated that members of the S’wanee community swore never to lie, cheat, or steal, on penalty of permanent expulsion. It was a zero-tolerance policy and the cornerstone of the S’wanee Experience. From it flowed the most important and enduring of S’wanee’s traditions: doors without locks, unsupervised tests, unattended bags, purses, and computers. S’wanee was a wonderland of trust and security and openness.

Cody glanced out at The Girl from the line, but she was adjusting her maybe rhinestone/maybe diamond earring and chatting with the chick next to her, awaiting their turns to rise and sign. Banjo nudged Cody and handed him the pen. With a slight tremble, he poised it on the empty line. The calligraphy paragraph was much longer than he remembered and tiny-lettered, almost Willy Wonka–esque. He bent over and steadied his hand to make a proper signature, and nothing came out.

An upperclass Gownsman smiled and tapped the inkwell. Cody dipped the pen and stupidly dribbled a few drops across the tablecloth. As the organ music swelled—with one recurring off note from a ball stuck in the pipe—Cody felt all eyes upon him, because
this
was
his
moment. He found his line again, and, with a quick breath, signed his full legal name. And that was that.

Dean Apperson clasped his hand with both of his, and the Gownsman closed and whisked the leather book away, even though there were several lines and pages left empty, and another Gownsman (Gowns
woman
) replaced the book with a fresh one, and the Big Dog said, “Welcome, Cody. Welcome,” and the line continued on, and Cody was back standing at his seat.

Now it was official: He was part of this place. And as he watched the dozens of others file past and sign and take their own place, he felt, for the first time in his life, truly part of a family. His new family was starkly different from the one he’d been forced to grow up with—his jaded Jersey friends who were simultaneously too sophisticated and too naive, who’d seen it all but lacked the wisdom to digest and understand anything, who slinked around always chatting, always prattling about nothing at all. “OMG, she, like, said that?” and “What, like, bothered me about what he said was this,” and “I told her, you know, she wasn’t being, like, fair about that,” in endless circles, and they never shut up, and they never said anything. His new family stood tall and marched proudly with almost military posture and purpose, and when they spoke, it had a point and a direction, and they moved the ball.

The freshmen in line were kicking the Ping-Pong balls around as they waited, and some lobbed them back into the audience.

He already felt a
connection
with this family—not the Facebook/Twitter/endless texting non-connection of dead-eyed drones and idiots, but the in-person bond of those who had found this place together for a reason and would take the journey with one another, and he would be curious, just like the Big Dog demanded, and he would experiment and expand, and for the first time, he would learn, really learn things. His mind ransacked a million thoughts and feelings and pinpointed the root of his emotion: Cody belonged.

Banjo leaned over and murmured, “Why the fuck are you crying?” and Cody insisted, “I’m not,” and he wasn’t really, and Banjo said, “
Das Puss
!” and looked ahead.

A ball pinged Cody’s forehead and ponged away. A direct hit. Cody looked up and The Girl was at the signing table, eyeing him with a mock “whoops!” She leaned over the table, shook her bracelet out of the way, and signed the book.

Dean Apperson ended the ceremony with the customary “
Ecce Quam Bonum
” and beheld the goodness as the crowd herded chaotically toward the exit. The freshmen intermingled, and Cody got separated from his section in the merry exodus, which clogged midway down the aisle. The Phantom played “Rock Lobster” on the organ, which, by this point, didn’t faze anyone, and some danced to it. Cody felt a pinch on his arm and turned to The Girl next to him.

“I’m Beth,” she said in a husky inside voice. “We’ve been flirting.” She spoke without looking at him, like an old spy movie.

“I’m Cody,” he said, refusing to seem flummoxed. “Flirting?”

“Well, staring,” she said, inching ahead in the crowd. “Whatever you call that.”

“Yeah, you look familiar. You look like someone.”

“I look like Noomi Rapace,” she said automatically. “So I’m told.” Bingo. Marcie had taken Cody to the Swedish film after she read the book, and The Girl looked like the girl in the movie. “But I don’t have those piercings,” Beth continued, “or a dragon tattoo. And I’m not bisexual.” Her hazel cat eyes flashed up to his. “Technically.”

They were getting closer to the chapel lobby, the source of the bottleneck, as the inching crowd circled left or right, instead of straight through to the open door outside. It slowed everybody down.

“You’re in Purple Haze?” she asked, still furtive, although she hardly seemed shy.

“You been following me?” he parried.

“No,” she said, not taking the bait. “But I can read.” She subtly nodded, and Cody saw the chapel rows were marked off with printed section names. “You were sitting with Rebel’s Rest.” She shot him a quick smile. “Or do you just wander around in a fog?” She pursed her glossy lips and scanned the crowd ahead.

“What section are you?” Cody asked, giving up the spar, since they were close to the lobby door. He sensed she would break it off and mingle with others once outside. She seemed hesitant to be caught with him in public.

“I’m in Tuckaway,” she said, “which, funny enough, is tucked away. Out by the lake.” Cody hadn’t wandered that far yet. “Its nickname is the Flea Bag. Haven’t figured that one out.”

“I haven’t figured out Purple Haze yet either,” Cody said, as they inched into the lobby. “I’ll come check out the Flea Bag sometime.” But Beth quickly said, “No, don’t bother, really,” and then she took a step away from him and smiled at someone else. Across the lobby stood Ross, surrounded by freshmen girls. He smiled back at Beth and lifted his eyebrows. Were those two already hooking up? In secret?

A girl in a blue floral dress shrieked “NO!” and pointed at Cody. Everyone in the lobby turned and instinctively backed away from him toward the sandstone walls. There were a few gasps but mostly silence.

Cody was standing on top of the bronze S’wanee seal in the lobby floor. Beth looked at him and mouthed “Ruh-roh” and then slinked toward the side door and slipped out. Cody quickly jumped off the seal, but the damage was done. From the awkward silence came Banjo’s racking laugh.

“Oh man,” he said through laughter. “Oh man, oh man, oh man!” Now others were laughing too, but they seemed uncomfortable, and the lobby quickly cleared out. “Ole buddy, ole pal.” Banjo clapped his arm sympathetically around Cody’s shoulder. “We haven’t even started classes yet. You done released the curse!” Then Banjo hot-stoved and fanned his hand.

Cody, not at all superstitious, still felt clumsy and marked, in the wrong way. “Well, fuck it,” he said, following Banjo and Elliott outside. At least he now knew what a “narthex” was.

Out on the Quad, the now-official freshman class mingled at their final reception, a proper tea with real china and triangle sandwiches with cut-off crusts. The word had spread, and several glanced over curiously at Cody, forever the Freshman-Who-Stepped-on-the-Seal. The stupid legend had an upside: Cody had made a name for himself and was no longer anonymous here.

“Don’t worry about it.” Ross laughed, slapping him on the back. “It’s reversible.” Caleb and Vail and Paxton and Skit also laughed and offered moral support, and Cody started to enjoy his newfound infamy. Banjo, the mastermind behind the Ping-Pong ball prank, had his own new fan club, too. Hopefully now he could put away the please-look-at-me hard hat for good. Cody scanned the crowd for Beth, but she was nowhere, apparently too cool for tea. It struck him that the most unusual girl in the freshman class had the most commonplace name.

The rest of the S’wanee all-stars were there. Pearl and Fletcher chatted by the sandwiches, and Cody overheard Pearl say, “It’s so nice to have kids around again. Feels like forever.” Fletcher nodded and said, “I forget how much work it is, getting ready for them. I’ve gotten rusty.” Pearl smiled and rubbed his back. “You and me both,” she said. Dean Apperson huddled with a few black-gowned professors out of earshot, and his golden retriever lay panting on the grass while several younger dogs, all mutts of various sizes, circled around playfully. One tail-wagging mutt took a tennis ball up to a professor, who tossed it across the lawn.

On the edge of the Quad, seemingly ostracized, stood Nesta. She was up to her strange antics, feverishly shaking her head and pawing at her ears. She started to retreat farther from the Quad but stopped and shook her head again. She whined, agitated and uncomfortable. Ear mites, Cody knew, remembering Max’s frequent bouts with them. A few eardrops would kill them off, and Cody, feeling sorry for the tortured dog, would suggest it to Fletcher.

“Yo! Dr. Curse!” Ross beckoned from across the Quad. “Get over here for the class photo! People are lining up to meet you!”

T
hat night, there was an air of nervous expectation at Rebel’s Rest. The fanfare and hand-holding were over, and classes would start the next morning. Pearl oversaw a buffet taco supper, and everyone got an e-mailed class schedule for the week and a brief reading assignment—a Shirley Jackson short story—to kick off discussions in English class.

“Homework already?” Banjo whined into his iPad, but Cody was quietly thrilled by his new swanee.edu e-mail address and fired off a quick “Miss you and love you!” note to his mother. His Purple Haze family lounged throughout the log cabin—in the dining room, study, front living room, and back porch—settling into their reading assignment with hushed seriousness. Playtime was done. Ross had both his laptop and iPad spread out across the circular table in the living room, a model of upperclassman diligence. He clearly had more homework than the rest of them.

“Vail, I accidentally took your iPad,” Skit said, returning from the kitchen with a Coke Zero and a pear. “I guess I have yours, too,” Vail said, turning hers over to check the name label. “They all look alike. I can’t figure the damn thing out anyway.” Cody taught them how to change the screen wallpaper to personalize their iPads and then showed them a few basic tricks and shortcuts.

“Thanks, Cody,” Skit said, impressed. “How the hell do you know all this?”

By ten p.m., Cody had read his assignment three times—it was a good, twisted story with a shockingly violent ending—and the log cabin had mostly emptied out. In the silence, his iPad dinged an expected-but-forgotten e-mail from the financial aid office, assigning him a campus job at DuPont Library and asking him to report tomorrow for training.

“Heh-heh.” Ross smiled when Cody told him. “Working for the Widow Senex. Good times.” He didn’t elaborate, but as he packed up later, he muttered under his breath, “The battiest woman on campus running the goddamn library. Fucking genius.” He laughed and patted Cody on the back and said, “‘Night, champ,” before wandering out and down the hall.

Back in his room, Cody picked and laid out his “first day” clothes—he folded his khakis to flatten out the wrinkles and shook a white oxford shirt from his box before hanging it, as the now-familiar hallway banter ping-ponged outside his lockless door. (Elliott, bathroom: “Arthur, you take my shampoo again?” Banjo, bedroom: “Mebbe. You washing your hair again? You’re worse than a
fracking
chick.”) Cody recharged his iPhone and set the alarm for six thirty a.m., so he could go for a run and clear his head before the first class. He was fully wired in with his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, and he added his shiny new S’wanee e-mail address to all accounts. His mother hadn’t yet responded, which was unusual, but maybe his new e-mail landed in her spam folder. He’d call tomorrow, in private, out of earshot, to alert her.

He went to add the S’wanee website to his iPad main screen, but the site was down for maintenance and simply said “Forbidden.” He bookmarked it anyway and wondered who was working on the site this late at night. He wished he’d been assigned to that job.

Looking out from his window across the Quad, where a handful of students and professors still meandered about the peaceful night and ever-studious Ross disappeared behind the evergreen, doubtless on his way back to the lab, Cody felt like mayor of it all. If he had a magic wand, he’d bring back the fireflies to make the picture even more perfect. S’wanee was exciting and vibrant and fresh by day, silent and serene and comforting by night. It was a magical place at any hour, and Cody felt a sudden pang of panic that someday, before he knew it, he would graduate and have to leave here. He was, even now, dreading that awful day and tried to put it out of his mind.